Obama paralyzed by fear

U.S. general: Obama paralyzed by fear

 

By Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, U.S. Army (ret.)

Now I understand! For years, many veterans and active military have been alarmed about the idiocy of the changes in battlefield aeromedical evacuation known as Dust Off. For reasons having nothing to do with patient care, Dust Off has been removed from the control of the professionals, the medics, and put under the control of amateurs, aviation staff officers, or ASOs. This is the first such change since the Civil War.

I document the unparalleled excellence of Dust Off, and the effects of the changes, in my book, “Dead Men Flying.” Needless to say, it was the most outstanding battlefield operating system of that war – some one million souls saved and unprecedented survival rates. No warrior of Vietnam is more revered than the Dust Off crews.

In the words of Gen. Creighton Abrams, former U.S. Army chief of staff and former supreme commander in Vietnam: “A special word about the Dust Offs … Courage above and beyond the call of duty was sort of routine to them. It was a daily thing, part of the way they lived. That’s the great part, and it meant so much to every last man who served there. Whether he ever got hurt or not, he knew Dust Off was there. It was a great thing for our people.”

Fast forward to current battlefields. We hear horror stories about patients waiting and dying because Dust Off didn’t launch or came too late. The launch standard in my unit in Vietnam was two minutes; today it is 15 minutes! Can anyone imagine a fire truck taking 15 minutes to get under way? I could go on and on, but one has to ask, why? Why the changes to an excellent, proven system?

The answer is the Obama-Panetta Doctrine. In response to the horrible abandonment of dying Americans in Benghazi, Defense Secretary Panetta said: “(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.”

On its face, that is a remarkable, indeed incomprehensible, change from America’s doctrine in past wars. By that standard, there would have been no Normandy or Inchon. In fact, I can’t think of a war we fought in which we didn’t go into harm’s way without real-time information or to save lives – something the president refused to do in Benghazi. Dust Off would never launch in Vietnam under that doctrine.

To fully understand the doctrinal change, one has to understand President Obama. He has a dearth of understanding of our military and military matters. We hear he is uncomfortable in the presence of ranking military and seldom meets with them. He is not a person who can make decisions, and he takes an extraordinary amount of time to do so, leading to such unseemly labels for a commander in chief as “ditherer in chief.”

President Obama may have set records for voting “present” on important issues. He cowers from crisis decisions.He is a politician who thinks only in terms of votes and his image. Although I was a psychology major back in the day (I’d love to hear a professional analyze risk and Obama), I won’t try to define his insides, but I believe he is risk-averse – fearful of risk – and that is the basis of the Obama-Panetta doctrine.

This aversion for risk dominates Dust Off rescue operations where, in addition to an unconscionable reaction time, risk assessment is the primary consideration for mission launch – not patient care. In two years flying Dust Off in Vietnam, I never heard that term, nor did any Dust pilot I know. The ASOs, remote from the battle, have developed time-consuming algorithms to analyze risk while the patient bleeds, something that’s impossible to do by anyone other than the pilot and the ground forces at the scene.

And Obama’s terror of risk contributed to the massacre of Americans by terrorists in Benghazi. We hear that the president did not even convene the Counterterrorism SecurityGroup while the Benghazi terrorist massacre was visually and verbally available in real time. That is like ignoring FEMA during Hurricane Sandy. But once you bring in a group labeled anti-terrorist, you have to acknowledge terror exists, something the president is loath to do.

My veteran friends are horrified by the Obama-Panetta doctrine. At least 359 retired flag officers support Mitt Romney – only five that I know of support Obama. Some 150 former prisoners of war also support Romney; I know of none who support Obama.

America needs to listen to these veterans. They understand leadership. They know how to deal with risk in war. They would not want this man with them in combat or crisis. They never left a needy comrade behind. Obama did.

---

Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, retired from the U.S. Army, is a recipient of the United States military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/u-s-general-obama-paralyzed-by-fear/

Obama says trust us with your DNA

Report urges programs to develop consumer confidence in government research

 

In an age when government demands nude X-ray images for someone to be an airplane passenger and is planning to have the IRS watch what kind of health coverage one has, is there any area of life that actually is private?

Well, maybe DNA, at least until the feds launch their programs to convince consumers to trust government agents with their most personal data, that which can reveal not only present characteristics but possible future outcomes for that person and his or her family.

The U.S. government now has released a report called “Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing,” that comes from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

Its goal was to “find the most feasible ways of reconciling the enormous medical potential of whole genome sequencing with the pressing privacy and data access issues raised by the rapid emergence of low-cost whole genome sequencing.”

The chairman, Amy Gutmann, said without the cooperation of millions of Americans the research will falter, perhaps fail.

“The life-saving potential of genome sequencing depends on gathering genetic information from many thousands (perhaps millions) of individuals, most of whom will not directly benefit from the research,” she said.

“Those who are willing to share some of the most intimate information about themselves for the sake of medical progress should be assured appropriate confidentiality, for example, about any discovered genetic variations that link to increased likelihood of certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia.”

She warned that without assurances in place, “individuals are less likely to voluntarily supply the data that have the potential to benefit us all with life-saving treatments for genetic diseases.”

The commission’s report found that current procedures vary. On one end of the scale would be secure methods of protecting such private information – and on the other end?

“In many states someone could legally pick up a discarded coffee cup and send a saliva sample to a commercial sequencing entity in an attempt to discover an individual’s predisposition to neurodegenerative disease. The information might then be misused, for example, by a contentious spouse as evidence of unfitness to parent in a custody case. Or, the information might be publicized by a malicious stranger or acquaintance without the individual’s knowledge or consent in a social networking space, which could adversely affect that individual’s chance of finding a spouse, achieving standing in a community, or pursuing a desired career path,” the report said.

That cooperation will be needed from many is not the question.

“Realizing the promise of whole genome sequencing requires widespread public participation and individual willingness to share genomic data and relevant medical information,” said commission vice chair James W. Wagner. “In other words, scientists and clinicians must have access to data from large numbers of people who are willing to share their private information.

“This, in turn,” he said, “requires public trust that any whole genome sequence data shared by individuals with clinicians and researchers will be adequately protected.”

A primary goal, then, would be for procedures to be established so that all genomic data is protected, and that would include a ban on whole genome sequencing without the consent of the person.

“Your genome sequenced at your doctor’s office would be the same as your genome sequenced during research,” Gutmann suggested. “However, the sequence information collected in a doctor’s office is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act … and the sequence information collected during research is protected by what’s known as the Common Rule… These are just a few discrepancies in public policy that can create confusion and uncertainty.”

She continued, “Confusion and uncertainty tend to erode trust, and trust is the key to amassing the large number of genomic data sets needed to make powerful life-saving discoveries.”

The medical experts putting the report together said, “Currently, the majority of the benefits anticipated from whole genome sequencing research will accrue to society, while associated risks fall to the individuals sharing their data.”

Among the recommendations:

• All those involved in genomic research, from those who fund it to server companies that offer computing availability, “should maintain or establish clear policies defining acceptable access to and permissible uses of whole genome sequence data.”
• There should be a “consistent floor of privacy protections … regardless of how they were obtained.”
• “Professional ethical standards” related to privacy and confidentiality would have to be observed by every researcher, manager, operation of any database and others. Penalties would apply for failure.
• Access by “law enforcement or defense and security” to biospecimens should be allowed “only in exceptional circumstances.”
• “Robust and workable consent processes” should be developed so participants fully understand who has access to their information and for what purpose.
• A clear procedure for revealing to patients “incidental findings” must be established. Those could involve markers that could indicate a proclivity for development of a specific disease, such as cancer.

“Respect for persons implies not only respecting individual privacy, but also respecting research participants as autonomous persons who might choose to share their own data. Public beneficence is advanced by giving researchers access to plentiful data from which they can work to advance health care. Regulatory parsimony recommends only as much oversight as is truly necessary and effective in ensuring an adequate degree of privacy, justice and fairness, and security and safety while pursuing the public benefits of whole genome sequencing. Therefore, existing privacy protections and those being contemplated should be parsimonious and not impose high barriers to data sharing,” the report said.

“Clinicians and researchers must also act responsibly to earn public trust for the research enterprise,” the report said.

WND previously has reported on disputes over DNA data, including a case in Minnesota where the state was warehousing the DNA of all newborns.

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court gave privacy advocates a huge victory over their state government, deciding state law does not allow Minnesota’s health agencies to take, keep and use the blood spots that include DNA data for each child without restriction.

The state had argued that officials were entitled to the information and could use it for outside studies as they chose.

The case had been brought by nine families with 25 children. The Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom, which monitored the case’s progress since it was launched, had expressed concern about the possible eugenics influences that could result from inappropriate use of DNA data.

President Twila Brase said at the time last year, “We are cheered by this good news. When our organization discovered the state health department’s baby DNA warehouse in 2003 and the use of newborn DNA for genetic research without parent consent, we determined to do all that we could to stop this practice. No state law expressly permits these activities.”

She said, “We are pleased that these nine families were willing to sue the state of Minnesota. Their action and this decision now secures the genetic privacy rights and informed written consent rights of all Minnesota parents and newborn citizens.”

The ItsMyDNA.org website posts information for consumers, especially parents of newborns, to show what their own state does regarding the acquisition, maintenance and use of babies’ DNA.

She said there are 18 states that keep such information from 10 years to indefinitely.

“We know at the federal level, researchers want the states to become the steward of these blood spots,” she warned. “We’re saying that this DNA is the property of the children and the state doesn’t have a right to claim ownership.”

She continued, “We are not government subjects of research by virtue of being born, and our DNA is not government property.”

In a previous report, Brase warned that the accumulation of DNA data on entire generations of the population could result in unwelcome actions.

“Suppose … expanded screening of an infant reveals not a fatal and incurable disease but instead a host of genetic variants, each of which merely confers elevated risk for some condition or other,” her report said. “Who is to say at what point an uncovered defect becomes serious enough to warrant preventing the birth of other children who might carry it? At what point have we crossed the line from legitimate family planning to capricious and morally dubious eugenics?”

WND reported earlier when Brase’s report said the concept of “identifying” those who would be “unsuitable” for reproduction is enough reason for parents to be alarmed.

Her report said most parents “have no idea that government is doing the testing or retaining the data and DNA.”

“It is not hard to imagine the day when any discovered but nonsymptomatic condition could become a ‘pre-existing condition’ for which private insurers would not pay. The eugenic implications are obvious. Thus, the growing collection of genetic test results and newborn DNA could easily enable a eugenics agenda on the part of government agencies and private industry,” the report said.

WND also reported when the state of Texas forwarded the DNA from hundreds of newborn babies to a military database without parental permission or knowledge.

The Texas Tribune, an online publication founded by a former editor of the Texas Monthly and a longtime owner of the Texas Weekly, had published a story about the Department of State Health Services in Texas giving some 800 DNA samples to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s DNA Identification Laboratory.

The actions were uncovered as part of the publication’s review of nine years’ worth of e-mails over the collection of babies’ DNA, which recently was targeted by a lawsuit.

WND reported late last year that the dispute was settled out of court, providing a victory for genetic privacy.

According to the Tribune report, Texas officials routinely collected blood spots to screen for health issues. Then around 2002, officials started storing the blood spots on cards at Texas A&M University.

But officials never obtained parental permission and found themselves targeted by a lawsuit over their actions.

The Tribune reported that in addition to storing the blood spots, the state gave 800 samples – from which it removed identifying labels such as names and dates – to the military operation.

Brase said at the time there remain concerns, “This is the government. This is what people forget. This is the government planning to create a DNA warehouse of citizens.”

Would you trust the federal government with your DNA?

ISRAELI SCIENCE WEBSITE: OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGED

Long-Form Birth Certificate of Obama is a Forged Document

A note of explanation

Since this is a site of Science and technology, there is a need to explain why this site dedicates a page to expose forgery about a document related to Mr. Barack Hussein Obama. Mr. Obama is the President of the USA that is currently the leader of the Free World, and the most powerful country in the Western hemisphere. In his position as the President, the policies pursued by Mr. Obama affects the whole world and not just the USA.

Because of the persisting controversy about his eligibility, On April 27, 2011 the Office of the President at the White House released a document that is called “Long-Form Birth Certificate”. The release of this simple document, after two years of controversy, raised in our minds the possibility that there could be something suspicious about the information available on this document. To check this, we downloaded the document that was posted at the White House site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf.

The analyses presented below reveal without a doubt that the Long-Form Birth Certificate of Mr. Obama is a fabricated, fake and forged document.

The publication of such a blatantly fake document about something so basic as the birthplace of Mr. Obama, should raise great concern about the suitability of the person who is holding the reigns on the most powerful country of the World.

Moreover, the lack of action on the part of the members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate, as well as the courts of the United States, despite many previous appeals to these three branches of American government, also raise a concern about how the governmental institutions of the reputedly best, and certainly the most important democracy in the Free World have avoided this issue.

Below, we present two different means by which the PDF document of Long-Form Birth Certificate of Mr. Obama can be examined.

Analysis of the document using Foxit Reader

A PDF document can be read by many different type of programs freely available. Here we used Foxit Reader version 4.3.1 that can be downloaded from the Foxit web site.

Instructions to check the document:

1. Download the document fromhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf
2. Open the PDF document using Foxit Reader.
3. Zoom into the document 800%. Scroll down until you see the serial number of the document “61 1064″ in the top right-hand side of the document. In full page view the number appears as “61 10641″. But, after magnification, the last digit “1″ disappears! This last digit is also in a font that is different from the other digits. This is only one example. Many more examples can be discovered by examining magnified document with full page view of the document.

In brief, this simple analysis using just a viewing software reveals that the PDF document has been doctored by a graphics software.

Analysis of the document using Inkscape, a vector graphics software.

Reservations could be raised about the results of imaging by Foxit Reader noted above. As an independent test of the composition of the “Long-Form Birth Certificate” of Obama, the PDF file was also examined by an open source freely available Inkscape (version 0.48.1) graphics software.

Instructions to check the document:

1. Download the document fromhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf
2. Import the PDF document using Inkscape. Unmark the two options in order not to modify the document.
3. In vector graphics software, an image is composed of elements. If the “Long-Form Birth Certificate” of Obama was a photocopied document then it should not be composed of separate parts. To reveal if the document has parts, click on the image opened. The status line at the bottom of the software reports that the image is composed of “2 objects” that have been grouped.
4. To “ungroup” image components click Ctrl-Shift-G or select Object>Ungroup.
5. For a second time, again click on the image and to “ungroup” image components click Ctrl-Shift-G or select Object>Ungroup. The status line at the bottom of the program reports that the image includes 9 objects.
6. Again click on the image and for a third time to “ungroup” image components click Ctrl-Shift-G or select Object>Ungroup. This time you see the outlines of nine rectangles marking the boundaries of the 9 objects.
7. The most important object among the 9 objects that are revealed is shown below.

Comparing the object above with the original document, it is seen that in the top right-hand corner of the document the last digit “1″, of the serial number of the form “61 10641″ is missing. This repeats the same observation as seen in the simple magnified view of the document in the PDF Foxit Reader (see above).

• READ MORE : http://www.science.co.il/Obama-Birth-Certificate.htm

As Oil Sanctions Fail, Netanyahu Says Time To Strike Iran Is NOW

 

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advised visiting Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey Friday, Jan.20 that the time for action against Iran was now, for two reasons: First, the conviction that Iran has passed the point of no return for developing a nuclear weapon; and second, the diminishing prospects for a US-led embargo on Iranian oil to catch on before it is too late.

The Obama administration disputes the Israeli prime minister on both points, insisting there is still time for tough sanctions to incapacitate the Iranian economy and stop Tehran before it reaches the point of no return in its drive for a nuke. Israel insists that this pivotal point was reached four years ago in 2008.

Gen. Dempsey was exhaustively briefed on the Israeli position during his whirlwind interviews Friday with President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and three conversations with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, one with key General Staff officers.

It was not by chance that Maj. Gen. (ret.) Asher Yadlin, until last year Israel chief of military intelligence, maintained in a detailed article in the Tel Aviv daily Maariv: “If Iranian leaders were to convene tonight and decide to go ahead with the secret production of a nuclear bomb, they already possess the resources and components for doing so. This [capability] was once defined as the point of no return. [As matters stand] now, Iran’s nuclear timeline no longer hinges on the calendar; it rests entirely on a decision in Tehran.”
The former intelligence chief was saying that for four years, the US and Israeli governments colluded in propagating the false assumption that Iran had not reached a nuclear weapon capability. Presenting a highly problematic oil embargo in 2012 as capable of putting Iran off its nuclear stride is equally illusory.

Yadlin’s disclosure provided backing for Netanyahu who Thursday, Jan. 19, at the end of a visit to Holland, asserted for the first time: “Iran has decided to become a nuclear state” and called for “action now to stop Iran before it’s too late.”
Some of Israel’s cabinet ministers tried to soften the impact of the prime minister’s words by suggesting that his bluntness aimed at pushing President Barack Obama into implementing the sanctions he signed into law on Dec. 30 targeting Iran’s central bank and oil sales, and giving him an extra lever for bringing the European Union and Asian powers aboard.
But Netanyahu soon put them right. According to debkafile’s Jerusalem sources, he lined them all up to inform Gen. Dempsey – and through him President Obama – that they did not believe in those sanctions and suspected the Obama administration of orchestrating their buildup as a tool for holding Israel back from a unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Debkafile’s oil sources in Asia and Europe report that updated figures confirm how little traction the oil embargo campaign has achieved so far: There is no evidence that China, Japan, South Korea, India, Turkey and the European Union members, which purchase in total 85 percent of Iran’s total average export of 2.5 million barrels a day, have cancelled any part of their orders.

While China – which in 2011 bought from Iran 550,000 barrels a day, covering 11 percent of its oil – cut its orders down in January by 285,000, this had nothing to do with ab embargo. Beijing was simply exploiting the threat of an embargo to squeeze from Iran a discount on prices and reduction of its debt for previous purchases. China made it clear to the Security Council that is opposed to “sanctions, pressure and military threats” against Iran. After settling its price dispute with Tehran, China fully intends to return to its former level of trade, even if it decides to partially diversify its oil sources to Saudi Arabia following Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s Middle East trip this month.

The European Union, which buys some 450,000 barrels per day from Iran, holds a special meeting Monday, Jan. 23, after failing last week to approve a cutback on purchases from Iran. Iran provides Greece, Italy and Spain respectively with about 25 percent, 13 percent and 10 percent of their oil. They are holding out for a very partial embargo and want it delayed until the end of 2012.
Japan, while pledging publicly to keep reducing its purchases of Iranian crude by 100,000 barrels a day, is waiting to see whether China and India join the ban. “The United States should try and talk more with India and China as they are the biggest buyers of Iranian crude,” said Japan’s foreign minister Koichiro Gemba this week, clearly passing the buck.

South Korea is only willing to forgo 40,000 bpd, but is asking for a waiver.

India’s Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said this week that India, which as Iran’s second biggest buyer after China relies on Iran for 12 percent of its imports (3,500,000-4,000,000 bpd), will continue to trade with Tehran and not abide by sanctions.

In anticipation of a US-led ban on Iran’s central bank, Delhi announced this week that the CBI would open an account with an Indian bank for receiving payment for its oil, partly in Indian rupees instead of US dollars.
Turkey, keen to position itself as broker between the West and Tehran and the venue for future nuclear negotiations, is maintaining its import level of 200,000 bpd of crude from Iran.

Given the snaillike progress of the international oil sanctions campaign against Iran, the Israeli Prime Minister informed Gen. Dempsey Friday that he could not see his way to giving the Obama administration more time for these penalties to work. He stressed that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program had reached the critical point where time was of the essence for preempting a nuclear-armed Iran. source – DEBKA

 

‘Green Jobs Czar’ Van Jones resigns

WND

WND’s 5-month series of exposés leads to White House’s 1st casualty

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama‘s “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones quit late last night after pressure mounted over his extremist history first exposed in WND.

The last straw for Jones was being caught on tape in an expletive-packed rant, directly attacking Republicans in the Senate who he said abused their majority position in the past to push legislation through. He admitted after the statements were released that the comments were “inappropriate” and “offensive.”

“They do not reflect the experience I have had since joining the administration,” Jones said in the statement.

Jones was also linked late last week to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

When the White House press corps grilled White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about Jones on Friday, a reporter asked how the administration could reject “conspiracy theories” about his birth certificate while employing someone who previously charged the U.S. government with masterminding Sept. 11.

Get Glenn Beck’s ‘Common Sense’ … The case against an out-of-control government: Inspired by Thomas Paine

Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration,” a non-ringing endorsement that set the stage for his ouster. Jones’ name appeared on a petition calling for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officials had orchestrated the 9/11attacks.

Jones flatly said in his statement that he did not agree with the petition’s stand and that “it certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever.”

As for his other comments he made before joining Obama’s team, Jones said: “If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize.”

In April, Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for WND.com, broke the first major story on Jones who was identified as a self-described radical communist and “rowdy black nationalist” who said his environmental activism was actually a means to fight for racial and class “justice.”

Succeeding revelations by WND included:

• Jones previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a top director.
• Jones was co-founder of a black activist organization that has led a campaign prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Glenn Beck’s top-rated Fox News Channel program. The revelation followed Beck’s reports on WND’s story about Jones’ communist background.
  
• That Jones and other White House appointees may have been screened by an ACORN associate.
  
• One day after the 9/11 attacks, Jones led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the victims of “U.S. imperialism” around the world.
  
• Just days before his White House appointment, Jones used a forum at a major youth convention to push for a radical agenda that included spreading the wealth and “changing the whole system.”
  
• Jones’ Maoist manifesto while leading the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, was scrubbed from the Internet after being revealed by WND.
• Jones was the main speaker at an anti-war rally that urged “resistance” against the U.S. government – a demonstration sponsored by an organization associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party.
• In a 2005 conference, Jones characterized the U.S. as an “apartheid regime” that civil rights workers helped turn into a “struggling, fledgling democracy.”
  
• Jones signed a petition calling for nationwide “resistance” against police, accusing them of using the 9/11 attacks to carry out policies of torture.

While talk radio and cable television picked up WND’s reporting and increased the pressure on the administration to cut Jones loose, there was no significant press coverage of the scandal by the major U.S. news media until late last week.

Note: Media representatives interested in interviewing WND’s Aaron Klein should e-mail WND.

Afghanistan becoming Obama’s Vietnam?

Revival of Taliban attacks threatening American goals

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

Afghanistan could prove to be a quagmire for President Obama, with the Taliban resurgence a threat to existing U.S. forces, which which will increase by 17,000 troops, and to Pakistan’s timid government, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Part of the problem for U.S. and NATO troops is that they are not trained for the type of insurgency that exists in Afghanistan. They are conventionally trained to go against an unconventional guerrilla Taliban force and are placed in remote outposts that would be in a position to be picked off before help could arrive.

This assessment comes as Pakistan within the past week has yielded the Swat Valley territory some 100 miles north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

While the capital is not under immediate threat, concessions of large swatches of land to the Islamic militants in the northwestern portion of the country that borders Afghanistan could embolden them to pursue further land acquisitions.

For example, the Taliban this week initially moved into the Buno district south of the Swat area, only 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital, but has offered to withdraw.

“Pakistan today is in dire straits where its very existence as a nation-state is at stake,” according to international relations and strategic affairs analyst Subhash Kapila.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

“Pakistan’s creeping Talibanization is no longer creeping but now galloping from its explosive western peripheries to the very heartland of Punjab. Pakistan’s galloping Talibanization is no longer a strategic menace for the United States and NATO Forces in Afghanistan only, or for that matter to India,” Kapila said. “Pakistan’s Talibanization has emerged today as an untreatable or malignant cancer afflicting Pakistan’s survival.”

The signs already are there for Pakistan. Its leadership under recently elected President Bilawal Bhutto Zadari is considered weak and doesn’t have the full confidence of the Pakistani military. In addition, Pakistan’s military isn’t trained to fight the growing insurgency in the country. Instead, Pakistani military doctrine is oriented toward conventional fighting to oppose Indian military forces.

Further, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, is increasingly being infiltrated by Taliban sympathizers and by mid-level military personnel who are sympathetic to it.

In fact, the Sunni Taliban originally was a creation of the ISI as a means of gaining influence in neighboring Afghanistan, first against the then-Soviet Union and to counter traditional Indian and growing Shiite Iranian influence in the country. Historically, Pakistan since its creation in 1947 has regarded Afghanistan as being in its sphere of influence.

“Pakistan is in the process of being gobbled by a Frankenstein’s monster of its own creation,” according to B. Raman, security expert with the South Asian Analysis Group.

For the complete report and full immediate access to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, subscribe now.

Obama a Muslim who studied in Islamic schools

Says Arab world campaign contributions ‘may enable him to win U.S. presidency’

By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan origins who studied in Islamic schools and whose campaign may have been financed by people in the Islamic and African worlds, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said during a recent televised national rally.

“There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama,” said Gadhafi in little-noticed remarks he made at a rally marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid on his country.

The remarks, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, MEMRI, were aired on Al Jazeera in June.

The video also has been posted on YouTube and can be seen here:

“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” continued Gadhafi. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

“We are hoping that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs,” Gadhafi said.

Gadhafi went on to lament statements Obama made at a June 4 address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in which the presidential candidate stated if he is elected president, “Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”

But it seems Gadhafi was not aware that the next day, during a CNN appearance, Obama explained he meant Jerusalem shouldn’t be physically divided with a partition and was not referring to the city remaining in exclusively Jewish hands.

Stated Gadhafi: “But we were taken by surprise when our African Kenyan brother [Obama], who is an American national, made statements (about Jerusalem) that shocked all his supporters in the Arab world, in Africa, and in the Islamic world.

“We hope that this is merely an elections ‘clearance sale,’ as they say in Egypt – in other words, merely an elections lie. As you know, this is the farce of elections – a person lies and lies to people, just so that they will vote for him, and afterwards, when they say to him, ‘You promised this and that,’ he says: ‘No, this was just elections propaganda.’ This is the farce of democracy for you. He says: ‘This was propaganda, and you thought I was being serious. I was fooling you to get your votes.’

“Allah willing, it will turn out that this was merely elections propaganda. Obama said he would turn Jerusalem into the eternal capital of the Israelis. This indicates that our brother Obama is ignorant of international politics, and is not familiar with the Middle East conflict,” Gadhafi said.

Gadhafi went on to express his hope if elected Obama will implement a “one state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning Israel would be flooded with millions of Palestinian Arabs who would terminate the country’s Jewish nationality.

Get the book that started it all – Jerome Corsi’s “The Obama Nation,” personally autographed – for only $4.95, available today, but only from WND!

He said he was worried Obama may have a “black inferiority complex” whereby he may enact “white men” policies to prove he is no different from “white” America.

“The thing we fear most is that the black man suffers from an inferiority complex. This is dangerous. If our brother Obama feels that because he is black he doesn’t have the right to rule America, this would be a disaster, because such a feeling would make him act whiter than the white, and go to an extreme in his persecution and degradation of the blacks.

“We say to him: Brother, the whites and blacks in America are equal. They are all immigrants. America belongs neither to the whites nor to the blacks. America belongs to its original inhabitants, the Indians. Both the whites and the blacks immigrated to America, and so they are equal, and Obama has the right to hold his head high, and say: ‘I am a partner in America. This is my land as much as it is yours. If it is not my land, it is not yours either. It is the land of the Indians. You are immigrants, and so are we.’”

Obama was ‘quite religious in Islam’

Obama repeatedly has denied he is a Muslim. His campaign site states: “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.”

But as WND has reported, public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a mosque-attending Muslim.

Obama’s campaign several times has wavered in response to reporters queries regarding the senator’s childhood faith.

Commenting on a recent Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed in a mosque “something the presidential candidate said he never did,” Obama’s campaign released a statement explaining the senator “has never been a practicing Muslim.”

Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968, Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta’s Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as “L Soetoro Ma,” worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying religion. Obama’s school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled “also as a Muslim, according to documents” in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

Laotze blog, run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted: “All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a young ‘Barry Soetoro,’ being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.”

Indeed, in Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” he acknowledged studying the Quran and describes the public school as “a Muslim school.”

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Del.icio.us : ARAB, BARACK OBAMA, BREAKING NEWS, CHICAGO, DEMOCRATS, GADHAFI, ILLINOI, INDONESIA, ISLAM, ISRAEL, JERUSALEM, JOHN McCAIN, KENYA, LATEST NEWS, LIBYA, NEWS, POLITICS, QURAN, TERRORISM, U.S.ELECTIONS, obama
Zooomr : ARAB, BARACK OBAMA, BREAKING NEWS, CHICAGO, DEMOCRATS, GADHAFI, ILLINOI, INDONESIA, ISLAM, ISRAEL, JERUSALEM, JOHN McCAIN, KENYA, LATEST NEWS, LIBYA, NEWS, POLITICS, QURAN, TERRORISM, U.S.ELECTIONS, obama
Technorati : ARAB, BARACK OBAMA, BREAKING NEWS, CHICAGO, DEMOCRATS, GADHAFI, ILLINOI, INDONESIA, ISLAM, ISRAEL, JERUSALEM, JOHN McCAIN, KENYA, LATEST NEWS, LIBYA, NEWS, POLITICS, QURAN, TERRORISM, U.S.ELECTIONS, obama
Flickr : ARAB, BARACK OBAMA, BREAKING NEWS, CHICAGO, DEMOCRATS, GADHAFI, ILLINOI, INDONESIA, ISLAM, ISRAEL, JERUSALEM, JOHN McCAIN, KENYA, LATEST NEWS, LIBYA, NEWS, POLITICS, QURAN, TERRORISM, U.S.ELECTIONS, obama

Obama tied to Iraqi government fraud?

FROM WND

By Aaron Klein

Hundreds of millions in deals with candidate’s associates

Antoin “Tony” Rezko

JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama’s office engaged in six months of negotiations with a company controlled by convicted criminal Tony Rezko to lobby the U.S. government to push through a nixed $50 million contact to train Iraqi security personnel at a site in Chicago.

The contract was awarded to Rezko’s company while Aiham Alsammarae, a long-time, close Rezko friend and a contributor to Obama’s campaign, served as Iraq’s U.S.-appointed electricity minister, the senator’s office confirms.

Rezko was a major Obama fundraiser and associate for two decades.

Alsammarae also awarded another Rezko-controlled operation as part of a $150 million contract to construct a 250-megawatt electricity plant in Iraq.

Alsammarae later was arrested by Iraqi authorities for bilking the coalition government out of some $650 million. He was sprung from prison under questionable circumstances in 2006 and escaped from Iraq, where he is still wanted for questioning with regard to major financial crimes.

The information raises questions into the nature of Obama’s relationship with multiple deals made by Iraq’s Electricity Ministry while Alsammarae was in charge. Obama has ties to Alsammarae and to the recipients of several of the massive contracts Alsammarae handed out.

While he was the electric czar of Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority from mid-2003 until mid-2005, Alsammarae granted the $50 million contract to train Iraqis to guard electrical plants to Companion Security, a start-up reportedly controlled by Rezko, his partner Daniel Mahru and a front man, Daniel Frawley, a former Chicago policeman. Frawley has multiple civil court judgments against him for his alleged failure to pay millions in outstanding bills.

The plan was to fly about 150 Iraqis to a site in Illinois for security training, which reportedly would include the use of AK-47 machine guns.

Obama’s office did not reply to repeated WND requests for comment. A working number could not be found for Frawley.

Alsammarae did not return WND calls left on his cell phone and at his voicemail at his KCI Consultants firm in Chicago.

The contract with Rezko’s group was signed April 18, 2005, one month before Alsammarae left his governmental post.

But Iraq’s new electricity minister aborted the deal, complaining the Companion contract was too expensive, according to a U.S. embassy official in Baghdad who spoke earlier this year to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the spring of 2006, Frawley and his company reportedly reached out to Chicago politicians, including Obama and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, to bring pressure to revive the deal, arguing the business would be good for the state.

Blagojevich’s office and Illinois Homeland Security reportedly helped by offering an Army depot in Savanna in western Illinois as a site for Companion to conduct the Iraqi training.

Frawley then reportedly reached out to Obama, who in 2006 was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, engaging in six months of dialogue petitioning the Illinois senator to write a letter introducing the Rezko-connected Companion company to senior Iraqi officials. Frawley met with Seamus Ahern, who runs Obama’s Moline, Ill., office.

But Obama, who has denied doing political favors for Rezko, later claimed he did not known Rezko was involved with Companion.

Obama’s office declined to help about the same time Rezko was indicted on charges of fraud.

Obama’s spokesman Ben LaBolt said, “The Senate staff had two meetings, one conference call and sporadically e-mailed with representatives of Companion Security about their request for Sen. Obama to write a letter introducing the company to senior officials in the Iraqi government.”

LaBolt said Obama declined to help in the Companion deal, because “that is not the kind of action Sen. Obama usually takes for individual companies, and our staff concluded on that basis to decline the requested assistance.”

LaBolt claimed Obama was not aware of Rezko’s connections to the security firm.

LaBolt did not explain how Frawley could have survived the routine vetting of a petitioner by the U.S. Senate office staff when it was a matter of public record that his company was controlled by Rezko.

The nixed Iraqi government deal opens questions into the nature of Obama’s relationship with agreements made by various associates with Iraq’s Electricity Ministry while Alsammarae was in charge. Obama has ties to both Alsammarae and to the recipients of several of the massive contracts he handed out.

Alsammarae, a dual Iraqi-U.S. citizen, arrived in U.S. in 1976 and currently lives in Chicago and travels frequently to Amman, Jordan, where he maintains a residence despite still being wanted in Iraq.

Alsammarae has described himself as a close friend to Rezko, a former top confidante and fundraiser for Obama. Alsammarae and Rezko had been friends for nearly 30 years, since the two were classmates at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

WND reported Alsammarae posted more than one-third of Rezko’s jail bond earlier this year, putting up as surety his $1.9 million Chicago home and two other properties.

Alsammarae contributed the maximum allowable donation of $2,300 to Obama’s campaign, sending money six times in January, February and March. Obama donated the funds to charity in April, only after Alsammarae posted bond for Rezko.

As electricity minister, Alsammarae not only granted a Rezko firm the $50 million security training contract but also approved a contract with another Rezko company, Rezmar, to construct a 250-megawatt plant in the Kurdistani city of Chamchamal. That contract was granted to both Rezmar and the London-based General Mediterranean Holdings, which is headed by British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, who was also involved in a large real estate deal in Chicago with Rezko and others around Obama.

Auchi, a former Baathist who left Iraq in 1979, was convicted in 2003 in a French court of corruption in an oil deal that stretched back to the Saddam Hussein regime. Auchi denies the charges.

Auchi could not be reached for comment

In another connection to Obama, when Alsammarae was jailed in Iraq in 2006, his Chicago-based family reportedly contacted Obama’s U.S. Senate office for information. Obama’s office passed a written request to the State Department about Alsammarae Oct. 16, 2006, and received a reply from the U.S. consul in Iraq about a week later. The reply was forwarded by Obama’s staff to Alsammarae’s daughter.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Alsammarae landed his electricity ministry job. He was an outspoken critic of the U.S. military campaign in Iraq and publicly has supported Hussein.

In August 2000, Alsammarae, a board member of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, appeared in Washington alongside celebrities such as Martin Sheen and British politician George Galloway at a demonstration against U.N. sanctions on Saddam’s regime.

Even as late as last month, Alsammarae delivered a press conference stating he hoped the insurgency in Iraq “would continue [against U.S. occupation] and avenges the Iraqi people.”

American political insiders suggest Alsammarae received major insider help in securing his U.S.-brokered Iraqi government position. Unconfirmed reports point to Alsammarae’s previous Baathist background as being a factor in his elevated status in post-Saddam Iraq.

Alammarae was accused in a federal filing during the Rezko federal corruption trial of being the recipient of a $1 million bribe from Rezko to deliver the original Companion deal. No charges have yet been filed, though the accuser is Daniel Mahru, the former partner in the Companion deal.

Alsammarae was the only cabinet-level Iraqi official to be convicted and jailed for misusing money during his time in office. In April, Alsammarae made an appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” to defend his troubled conduct in Iraq and in the U.S.

An Interpol warrant for his arrest, issued in 2007 at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government, was taken down after Alsammarae was forgiven for some parts of his conduct by an Iraqi legislative initiative, according to Arabic-language Iraqi criminal court documents obtained by WND and translated into English. Alsammarae has been warned by the Maliki government not to return to Iraq. Other charges are still pending, and Alsammarae has been warned by the Maliki government not to return to Iraq.

To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail , or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.

Del.icio.us : Barack Obama, News, Politics
Zooomr : Barack Obama, News, Politics
Technorati : Barack Obama, News, Politics
Flickr : Barack Obama, News, Politics